HD DVD Players For Only $99!
Think HD DVD isn't serious about winning this format war? Think again.Today, two major retailers, Wal Mart and Best Buy will start offering the Toshiba A2 HD DVD player for only $99. Other major stores will most likely be offering similar deals as "Black Friday" (the day after Thanksgiving, which launches the holiday shopping season here in the United States) draws closer.
Potential customers should note that supplies may be extremely limited (depending on your area of the country), and the $99 deal is also for a limited time.
This is a true bargain for those wishing to jump into HD DVD, since Toshiba is still offering 5 free titles for anyone who buys a new player.
An HD DVD player and 5 free movies for $99?! Beat that, Blu-ray.
posted by Shannon T. Nutt at 4:40 AM
16 Comments:
Nah, HD DUD players will not even come close to top Blu-Ray rival of winning the market this holiday season. For this past year since PS3 came out last November of '06, multiple statistics have shown that BD is leading the media format war close to 3:1. I called Toshiba yesterday to find out the ETA of my cousin's 5 free movie deal (he bought the A2 player) and they say that on top of the 8-10 weeks of processing, there is an additional 5 weeks to ship the HDDVD movies to the customer. He bought and mail the form on mid-September which means he will not see his free HDDVDS not until January of '08. What a bologna! My PS3 5 free BD movies (which BTW I bought and mail also in mid-September) just came in yesterday. Enough said.
A stand-alone player that costs less than $100 might very well tip the scales in HD-DVD's favor. The only reason that BluRay has any market share is because of the PS3. The reality is that most people have not bought either player. They are waiting for the price to drop.
With HD-DVD players regularly appearing for less than $200 and BluRay players stalling out at $500, the tide may well turn this Christmas.
ok....you're telling people to choose Blu-Ray because they get their dvds faster. HD DVD is going to be only 99.99. You're missing that point. Sony is pulling a scam right now with their new PS3 console. They offer a console for 399.99 but it doesn't play PS2 games. You have to hope that it's consumers looking to start fresh with a new system and eating the cost of all the previous games that they own. Consumers want cheaper prices. Yep...I;m waiting for my 5 free HD DVDs. You don't mind waiting when you've saved a lot of money in the process. I still say it makes no difference until Warner Bros. picks a side. WB is waiting to see who sells the most hardware during this holiday season. I can't see people picking Blu-Ray over HD DVD when they can save a lot of money.
The reason to pick something over saving money is because of quality. That's something these A2 players are lacking. Again, HD-DVD's are encoded at 1080p, these players will do 1080i. There's tons of complaints about the menus freezing up. Not to mention if you switch off of the input, the disc needs to reload, that goes for going into the setup menu on the player as well making it very hard to properly set everything up. But I guess that's why it's only $99. That and it stopped being manufactured a long time ago but places still have tons in stock (well, not Best Buy's, which is odd because they had the sale without the product), hence the sale.
If this holds up the whole holiday season HD-DVD will probably win. Cheap will always win. VHS won over Beta, beta was better. Blue-ray is better, but on a 30 to 40 inch TV can the average person really tell the difference between 1080i and 1080p, no. The mass will win here, the mass has 30 to 40 inch TV's, lower incomes, and lower level of interest in the minor difference between 1080i and 1080p. Also PS3 is losing major steam, mostly b/c they have no major exclusive games. I think by two years everybody will be on the HD-DVD bandwagon and Blue-ray will be the equivalent of a laser disc.
Wasn't laserdisc around for like 20 years? As for HD-DVD winning, this is what, the like 45th week in a row that Blu-Ray has beat HD-DVD in sales numbers? That's a tall order to overcome. Along with the fact that pretty much any movie released on both formats sells 2 to 3 times as many copies on Blu-Ray as it does on HD-DVD. These cheap players aren't meant to deliver quality. They're targeted at the uninformed consumer. It's Toshiba trying to keep their format afloat. They'll continue to do this with false information (K-Mart's little announcement) and cheap prices. Plus the fact that most people that spend $100 on an HD-DVD player (which is actually less than a lot of upconverting DVD players) probably wont be spending $20-$40 on movies to often. Oh, and from what I hear, the manufacturing dates on the A2 say Nov 2006. So it really was just them trying to get rid of their stock.
Why do you keep stressing that the A2 being sold was manufactured Nov 2006? HD DVD players come with an ethernet port(not Blu-Ray) so they can get software updates over the internet. Who cares when it was manufactured. People want to save money and these 99.99 HD DVD players are doing that. People with HDTVs want to not only watch their favorite channels in HD but DVDs as well. This is going to help them do that. No one is saying that Blu-Ray is bad, just that it's expensive.
After reading all the comments, how come Blu-ray medias are currently outselling HD DVD movies close to 3:1? THAT says alot! THAT means there is a HUGE number of blu-ray player owners out there (including PS3 of course) more than HD DVD player owners, regardless of the price drop. And I agree with Clayton, lots of lockups on the menus on the A2 model, that is why they cost so cheap.
hey...I know Blu-Ray is winning but it's 2 to 1...not 3 to 1. 66 percent to 33 percent. I'm just hoping that changes.
Oh I agree that Blu-Ray needs to come down in price to prevent Toshiba making any sort of come back. But the reason I keep bringing up the dates is because some people are denying this is anything except a fire sale. But it really is just a bunch of players that the company couldn't move being sold for less than it costs to manufacture them, just to get rid of them. Which normally I wouldn't have a problem with, but most people that ended up buying this thing probably don't know what's going on with the whole format war. And they probably don't know about the flaws the player has, or that it was basically just a sale to get rid of the players. Also, one thing to consider, and this happened to me, is the movies that will be on the format. I was in Wal Mart the other day and someone was asking for a Blu-Ray exclusive movie on HD-DVD. Naturally the employees didn't know what was going on and said they just didn't get it in. There is so much misinformation going around like that, it's not even funny. But that's what this sale was somewhat banking on. Sure this player was a cheap way for someone to get into HD media, but was it a good way? Probably not...
I wish HD DVD & Blu-Ray would send out more people to locations to explain what they can and can't get on the different formats. I noticed that HD DVD is showing ads during Sunday Night Football to inform more people about HD DVD. Disney is actually putting booths across the US in the major city malls to show people the difference between DVD and Blu-Ray. My wife went out last week to get me Spiderman 3 on HD DVD. I explained to her that it's only on Blu-Ray. She said," What the hell is a Blu-Ray?" Consumers already know what HD is. It's easier to remember HD DVD then Blu-Ray. Toshiba is banking on people just knowing what HD is and assume that HD DVD is the way to go.
i heard they sold 90,000 HD dvd Players last week. To really put a nail in blu rays coffin Microsoft should put in HD dvd player into the Xbox as a standard drive. Then they can go against PS3. with the new 40GB PS3 out for $399
Also HD format need to keep there new releases of new DVD movies up, to apply pressure against the Blu Ray.
The war is all about money and who going to spend the money on the format. Beta and vhs war lasted a long time with beta losing the war The war is far from over!
It's all about the HARDWARE numbers. If its profitable to produce movies on either format or both , they will, and from the looks of things no one will stick to one format exclusively with player numbers stacking like they are on both sides. But as for picking a winner, Geeezzz.Ive heard comparisons to the old Beta-VHS wars, with Beta being the better format and lost,But Beta also Had Sony and Sanyo as thier only player producers until very late, too late. Not This Time, Sony has licensed just about anyone interested, That's what VHS did before,and had several companies competing and prices fell. VHS won with a varity of lower priced machines over Betas Superior picture and costlier Sony Machines. Back Then People wanted Cheap, and VHS marketed to it, But Today this format war is for the HiDef market, people looking for quality first.
So the Question is , Is Toshiba able to stand alone , like Sony was with Beta and provide a Quality HiDef player for Dirt Cheap Price, It seems to be so thus far, The 2nd Generation A2 720p is being Blown out at $99 to make way for the 3rd Gen. A20-A30-A35 series all 1080p, ethernet- PIP, and all cheaper than Blu Ray's nearest equivalent. Because so far Blu Ray features can't come close to HD DVD, No Players have PIP,2 hardware tuners needed and a firmware update can't fix that, so no special simulcast blue screen how it was made featurettes in the corner on Blu Ray, Panasonic will have a BD30 with 1.1 software and PIP Dec 1st, still no ethernet for future updates like HD DVD,or any movies that use PIP yet. PS3 has ethernet, but does not have 2 tuners, so no PIP, Deawoo has a player with all that Blu Ray Needs to be on the same page with HD DVD as far as features go and in the said to be Superior Blu Ray Player, With PIP 2.0 software ,ethternet, But Release Date is ? and its a Deawoo. If Sony would loosen up and stop the price fixing like Apple and let the licensed Companies manufacturing Blu Rays to compete price wise, the many companies making Blu Ray Players would drive down the price , LOOK OUT HD DVD, If Not LOOK OUT BLU RAY, Toshiba seems almost willing to give players away to provide market for thier Sudio support, That kind of Deternination by Toshiba May well sink Blu Ray All by themselves
Sony fought back and it's working. Since they dropped the PS3 to 499.99 from 599.99...they have sold 100,000. Sony is going to make sure the world knows Blu-Ray
I am serious about my hi-def and making the right decision. So, this Christmas, I bought a PS3 and a Toshiba HD-DVD player. Quality is the most important for me. After a week of close comparison, there is no doubt in my mind that Blu-ray is the better overall format, for various reasons. HD-DVD is okay, and the next step after DVD, but skipping over it to BD is for me. However, I will admit that the average consumer preference these days for cheap over quality makes me fearful for the future of BD. We live in a "Wal-Mart" society, after all. Anyways, in a few years, there will be something else to replace HD-DVD/BD. Why would these companies let us settle for too long when there's money to be made and more formats to push into obseletism? I can't believe there wasn't some way to keep moving ahead from the Superbit angle and not start all over again. Remember, It wasn't too long after DVD took over the home theatre market and we all got our collections up to 3 digits that we found out we had to start over again with hi-def players. Besides, it took forever for the mass population to drop VHS and dive into DVD. It will take even longer for any large hi-def disc numbers to decide a true winner. Only a very small percentage of the consumer population cares about the hi-def disc "war" and is even involved. I mean, regular DVDs are still readily available, cheaper than ever, and largely present in previously viewed bins. Neither hi-def disc format can compete with THAT consumer value. What makes me really sick is movie companies taking sides and prolonging things further. Things may be decided by who writes the bigger cheques. Who has deeper pockets - Sony or Gates?Does anyone think Bill is going to let HD-DVD go away? In fact, who says either will? Apple and Microsoft still continue to battle it out, even though Apple products are superior in quality and performance (FYI: I own a PC). Hamsters on the wheel, people, hamsters on the wheel.
I have the Toshiba A2 player and it works like a champ. I chose HD-DVD for three reasons: It's the approved successor to DVD, it's inexpensive, and most importantly - it's a finished product.
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